When people first started using the internet, no-one anticipated that we’d be talking to our computers as if they were living people. But, in the 21st century, that’s exactly what we’re doing.

These days it’s fairly normal to hear someone say “Hey Siri” or “OK Google” and then proceed to ask for the weather or directions to a certain location.

The Need For Interaction

As technology has become mobile centric, people no longer want to have to type things into a keyboard. Instead, they want personalised, conversational style interactions with their devices.

That might seem a bit weird, at first, but when you consider just how much time we spend looking and interacting with our phones, it makes sense that we start treating our technology as our friend. After all, our phones have become our source for everything from communication to business to entertainment. Who else knows that much information about you?

Google is all-to-aware of how much we rely on technology to help us get through our day. That’s why they’ve launched their own personal assistant. Known as Google Assistant, the company’s artificial intelligence system is designed to be your own personal Google.

So, What Exactly Is Google Assistant?

Google Assistant is a smarter, more contextually aware version of Google Now. With certain virtual assistants, you have to use specific keywords in order to get it to work. Google Assistant doesn’t work like that. It understands the context of the phrase you’re saying and extracts the relevant information from it in order to assist you. For example, instead of saying, “Set a reminder to buy a birthday card” you can say “Remind me to buy a birthday card”.

This might seem like a minor adjustment, but when it comes to more complex queries, it makes phrasing your query far easier and more conversational.

Google CEO, Sundar Pichai says, “When I look at where computing is heading, I see how machine learning and artificial intelligence are unlocking capabilities that were unthinkable only a few years ago. This means that the power of the software — the “smarts” — really matters for hardware, more than ever before. The last 10 years have been about building a world that is mobile-first, turning our phones into remote controls for our lives. But in the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that is AI-first. A world where computing becomes universally available — be it at home, at work, in the car, or on the go — and interacting with all of these surfaces becomes much more natural and intuitive, and above all, more intelligent.

This is why we built the Google Assistant, which allows you to have a natural conversation between you and Google. It’s one Assistant that’s ready to help you throughout your day. The first instance appeared in our new smart messaging app Google Allo to help you in group conversations”.

Google is not the only company working towards making artificial intelligence and virtual assistants more mainstream. Amazon.com has done it with their Alexa-powered range of Echo smart speakers and Apple is doing it with Siri.

Soon we’ll all be speaking to our electronics and virtual assistants. Asking them to do everything from turning off the bedroom light to ordering a pizza and summoning an Uber.